Govt needs to accept there is an agrarian crisis: Sule

Lok Sabha MP and NCP(SP) leader Supriya Sule on Wednesday criticised the Budget, saying it has failed to address various issues facing the country, including agrarian distress.

Participating in the general discussions on the Budget for 2024-25 in the House, she appealed to the government to hold Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

If the Centre can hold general elections in Jammu and Kashmir, why can it not hold Assembly polls there, as people there deserve to make their own decisions, she asked.

Sule added that four engines of growth for a robust economy are investments, consumption, exports, and fiscal spending.

Corporate tax rates have been reduced in the pretext that it would help in attracting investments, but that is not reflecting in the numbers the government has given, the Baramati (Maharashtra) MP said.

“Was it too little too late to reduce the corporate tax? Is that one reason why investments are not coming and I think the government needs to introspect that's why the investment environment is not as good as it should be?” she said.

On consumption, the MP said it is not good as there is an agrarian crisis in the rural economy.

The government needs to accept that there is an “agrarian crisis in this country”, she said, adding the big FMCG companies have started the concept of “shrinkflation” and this government is denying that there is a price rise.

Shrinkflation, she said, is a marketing activity for all the big companies that directly impacts jobs.

On exports, she said Make in India was a “wonderful sloganeering”, but “has it converted into jobs?” India is also not able to take advantage out of the “China plus one” strategy, she said.

“What went wrong with the Make in India? All need to introspect,” Sule said.

On fiscal spending, Sule asked if the fiscal deficit is going to stop at 4.9 per cent.

“My concern is that once the supplementary demands come... it will probably go up to 5.6 per cent is the rough estimate,” Sule said.

She added that there was no talk about holding census in the Budget.

She also demanded for delimitation as constituencies today are large — “23-24 lakhs”.

For this, “we are getting only Rs 5 crore (under MPLAD funds)...Either you increase MPLAD or stop it,” she said, adding that this is not a sufficient amount.

Sule also pointed out that after the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, now the government has come out with ELI (employment-linked incentive). “So PLI is already failed, now is this ELI also going to fail?” she asked.

“You have already failed even in the fiscal deficit. Thanks to the RBI, you are safe. So where is this economy going?” Sule asked.

If there is no good discipline of finances, the country will be in an economic crisis, Sule said.